Investment and R&D out of touch with China's LED industry urgently need planning

Under the same lighting effect, LED can save more than 80% energy compared with traditional light sources, and its lifetime is more than 10 times longer than traditional light sources. As a new generation of global environmental protection light sources, LED is characterized by its high brightness, low heat, long life, etc. The most developed green lighting source in the 21st century. At present, China’s LED industry has formed an industrial chain for epitaxial wafer production, chip preparation, packaging integration, and LED applications. However, the lack of industrial planning related to industry standards, industrial layout, and R&D directions has caused market investment to focus on basic production capacity but not Promote LED industry upgrades.

Fearful development exposes industrial defects Although the market is expected to be high, at present, due to blind development, China's LED lighting industry has exposed problems such as lack of core technologies, insufficient innovation capacity, and disorderly market competition.

“As far as production value is concerned, the current LED penetration rate in the domestic lighting market is only 5%. The dependence of core technology on imports and higher overall costs have become a stumbling block to the further development of the LED industry,” said Zhang Xiaofei, a senior engineer at the LED Industry Research Institute.

"The LED chip is like an automobile engine. The lack of core technology will directly restrict the development of this industry." Feng Qing of NVC Lighting said. It is understood that the main technology of LED upstream chip production is in the hands of foreign companies, and the slow pace of localization of technology has affected the development of the industry. The MOCVD epitaxial furnace and its related supporting technologies are the top end of the LED industry chain. Currently, they mainly rely on imports, which greatly restricts the cost control of the upper reaches of the LED industry.

"As far as the overall level is concerned, there is still a gap of two years or so between China and world-class standards." Zhang Xiaofei thinks, "Many developed countries and developing countries or regions in the world are accelerating the development of semiconductor lighting technology and industry. At the top, China is in the second tier.

Blind investment and lack of core technologies have made China's LED lighting market a mixed bag of good and bad. Unstable quality is also a common problem faced by LED companies. “Some customers buy LED lamps at high prices, and they cannot even support thousands of hours. Even the quality is not as good as traditional lighting. At present, there are many small and medium-sized enterprises that produce low-quality products in the LED lighting market. The industry structure is not stable.” said Feng Qing. .

"It is expected that within 5 years, only 50% of the small-sized enterprises that make indoor LED lights will disappear. The main reason is that the quality is not enough." Zhang Xiaofei said. With international giants entering the Chinese market, many domestic enterprises with certain core competitiveness will face the risk of mergers and acquisitions, and uncompetitive enterprises will be directly eliminated. "If we do not regulate the market, the future will likely be reduced to the point of doing a good job for foreign lighting giants." Jiang Fengyi said.

The industry calls for industry norms With the continuous growth of lighting in production, life, urban streets, etc., the role of lighting electricity in power consumption is increasingly prominent. According to statistics, China's lighting electricity consumption accounts for more than 12% of the country's total electricity consumption, and it is increasing at an average annual rate of 15%. The market for energy-saving lighting products as an alternative to incandescent lamps is welcoming a good opportunity.

Philips, the world's largest lighting manufacturer, has predicted that 90% of the lighting produced in 10 years will be LED. Insiders pointed out that with the continuous improvement of technology in LED lighting industry, the cost of LED production has dropped by 30% per year. All incandescent lamps will not be eliminated for more than 10 years.

In order to make the LED lighting industry develop in a healthy and orderly manner, a number of experts recommended that the government strengthen the guidance of the local LED industry as a whole, and publish the enforceable national industry standards as soon as possible, especially the industrial standards of related products in demonstration projects, such as street lamps and tunnels. Lamps, display screens, landscape lights, and so on, so that all local government procurement and enterprise products have standards to follow.

Many experts believe that competition in the market is becoming increasingly fierce and that it is imperative to strengthen the research and development of next-generation semiconductor lighting technology. At the same time, as soon as possible to achieve localization of semiconductor lighting equipment core MOCVD, fundamentally change the high-end equipment from the people's situation, and promote China's semiconductor lighting strategic emerging industries rapid and healthy sustainable development. Relevant supporting policies will be issued as soon as possible to strengthen the establishment and standardization of testing organizations, avoid some unrealistic test results, and improve the overall testing level and credibility.